Chronic intestinal ischaemia: diagnosis

Chronic intestinal ischaemia is a relatively rare but very important clinical entity, which is caused by a reduction in the splanchnic blood flow, most often because of atherosclerosis. Intestinal angina is postprandial abdominal pain developing when the genuine and collateral vessels no longer are able to accommodate the postprandial increasing demand from the gastrointestinal tract and the liver. In addition, the clinical picture very often includes sitophobia and weight loss. In daily clinical practice, conventional angiography is considered as the gold standard, but ultra sonography, computerized tomography and magnetic resonance angiography are gaining momentum when investigating for chronic intestinal ischaemia. These methods depend on imaging of the stenotic vessels not taking into consideration the possibility of sufficient splanchnic perfusion in spite of severely stenotic or occluded vessels. Only a few papers address the physiological consequence of stenotic or occluded vessels - the lack of postprandial increase in splanchnic blood flow.